slowly she turned

Living the Slow life in North Carolina

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  • Sunday morning coffee pot post

    My display at <Elements Gallery

    Whew. My workload is drastically less until mid-August now. This is what makes the craziness of spring worth it. Hopefully I will now have the time and energy to write and make art for the next several months.

    In less than one week, Sandy and I leave on our excellent adventure to Ireland. Although I love the idea of spontaneous travel and following our noses, my anxiety level and personality type (INTJ) will not allow it, so I have obsessively pored over Google maps and changed our reservations on most of our days at least once. I changed our car rental to begin as we leave Dublin so I feel much better about that. Plus, I ended up saving a lot of money by moving to a different company plus I upgraded our car size to economy. We did have a tiny “mini” car through Hertz and I decided that I didn’t want to ride all over Ireland with our luggage in my lap and on my feet. Apparently car rental is much cheaper in Ireland than it is in the U.S.

    Now we are doing a clockwise tour of the island because I discovered that this festival is going on the last weekend of our trip. It didn’t take too much rearranging. I changed our lodging from the hotel in Kells to Newgrange Lodge for a night in the Irish countryside (and less expensive) and I am actually happier with the bed and breakfast that I booked for the night of our anniversary, Gorman’s Clifftop House, overlooking the Atlantic near Dingle. We will stay at Davitt’s in Kenmare, and two nights at the Lake of Shadows Hotel in Buncrana, as well as in-town guesthouses in Dublin and Galway for two nights each, so it will be nice to stay in a lovely country house on the sea cliffs. I cancelled our stay in Ballycastle because of our new schedule, and this also means that one of my main things that I want to do, hike on the Giant’s Causeway, will be on our last day on the way back to Dublin. I hope that we will not be too worn out by then, but I’m done worrying about that. If we are, then it will be an excuse to go back. My Irish blog friend Moonwaves gave me some excellent advice on where to stay nearest the airport (the Clarion) for late on our last night we will return the car, take a shuttle to the hotel, collapse, and be up early to fly back to Greensboro.

    I managed to get my wedding band off, and since my hand is a bit swollen (yes, I overdid it with the gardening, not to mention the thirty pounds or so I’ve put on since my wedding day 25 years ago), I put it away. Sandy lost his band recently (probably behind the dresser) and we will both buy new ones in Ireland. Celtic knot silver band, at least for me.

    So my thoughts have been all about work, Ireland, and working at the gallery, which I did in one fell swoop in the past five weeks, in a fit of what I can only describe as miscalculated. I normally know better than to schedule anything toward the end of spring semester. The upside is that I am now free of obligations other than work for the entire summer. I don’t really mind gallery sitting though. It is very relaxing, and once I do the few chores required, I work on a project. What I really hate is being on the hospitality team for a reception. I am not an event planner or a decorator. If it was up to me, I’d probably set out a bowl of peanuts on a bare table and provide a cooler of different drinks. But we do have very nice receptions and it is a good thing that I have others to make me toe the line on this.

    I will post about the Back Forty later – I have done some planting and other work back there this spring.

  • Sunday morning coffee pot post: The Whining

    So, let me get the whining over with. It has to be done, I’m afraid, but enough time has passed that I found some upsides.

    The workshop with India Flint was canceled, and I was devastated at first – actually cried for a hour at work. Fortunately I did not book my flight, because I almost did for both Sandy and me, and that would have been a pile of money that I could not have gotten back. This one was particularly special to me because my other favorite artist, Jude Hill, was going to be there, so unless it happens next year the same way, it might be irreplaceable. HOWEVER, the fact was that it was way beyond what I could afford anyway. I would not have thought about going into this kind of debt if it hadn’t been for both of these artists being in the same place with me. I have to believe that it happened for a reason. I hope that the reason is not that I’ll need the money for something not fun, like health reasons or a family emergency.

    Maybe the reason is so I can have more money to spend in Ireland! I switched around our itinerary this week, because I found out that a festival is happening at Grianan_of_Aileach
     on the last weekend we’ll be in Ireland. So since most of our reservations could be cancelled without problem, we are now going to travel clockwise to the Southwest first and wind up at the Giant’s Causeway on our last day. Since the Giant’s Causeway is the main thing I want to do I’ll have to cross my fingers that we won’t be too worn out to hike by then, but there are shuttles for old people – HA!

    We both bought some good hiking shoes this weekend. They are Merrill slip-ons, have a rugged tread, and look nice enough to wear into a restaurant without being embarrassed. I bought a men’s style because the salesperson said that women with wide feet often find them more comfortable. Wish I’d known that 30 years ago!

    So here’s my last bit of whining. I started having some curious things going on with my body in the past month or so. I finally went to my ob/gyn to see what was up. Come to find out after a pap and a blood test that I am no longer in menopause. I’m producing estrogen again. So if I end up getting my period in Ireland for the first time in a year and a half, I’ll be mighty pissed off. My doctor doesn’t know why, so when I get home from my trip I get to have an expensive test to look at my inner parts. And, for some reason, I have to call my insurance myself to see if it will be covered, even though my doctor says that it is medically necessary. This annoys me greatly. I have the codes to give them now so hopefully it will not be an issue. I want to forget about this totally until after I get back, because it is scary, even though I know that it probably will just be fibroids or something.

    Let’s see, is there anything else to whine about? I want to get it all over with now.

    Nah, the cats are doing well, my hands are better, work is winding down to a tolerable level (even though I’ve had to deal with one intolerable egomaniac) and I’m beginning to garden and bind books again. All in all, it’s a pretty good life!

  • Sunday Morning Coffee Pot Post: Down Home Photos

    I figure that I really have no excuse not to do a coffee pot post this morning, with this lovely rain, so I made another pot.

    I don’t like whining on the blog so much and I hate looking back on my posts and seeing negativity. On the other hand, this is my journal and I want it to represent my life fairly accurately, good and bad.

    Lately it’s been mostly good and a little scary. I sold three items in the gallery so far this month and I worked in the gallery a lot. I decided to go ahead and do all my service requirements to the gallery right away so that I’ll have the summer free. Because who knows what the future may hold for me? It certainly has kept me on my toes lately.

    I went back home to spend Easter weekend with my mother, after a visit in March when I spent the weekend battling norovirus. Thank God she didn’t get it. It was fortunate for me, because Sandy got it at the same time and we only have one bathroom here, that I drove down to my mother’s house clueless about what would happen that night. Anyway, I took some photos when I was there this last time.

    The building that this used to point to was the Starlight. It was the club that my sister’s generation was forbidden to go to in high school so naturally they sneaked off to it. I never made it to the Starlight. By the time I was old enough to want to get in trouble there was the Purple Onion (briefly) and then the Gator Disco Lounge. Now the sign points to a beautiful Spanish moss draped millpond.

    I love this old house in Marietta. It has been in this condition for many years, and I am always afraid that it will be gone by the next time I visit, as so many older buildings that I explored as a kid in Marietta have burned down. So this time I took a lot of photos, with the idea of artwork to come.

    .com/8163/6956163884_35f566402e.jpg” width=”500″ height=”455″ alt=”Alligator Branch Road”>

    A building in “downtown” Marietta. It has been used for storage for as long as I can remember by the current owner. It used to be the depot when the railroad ran through Marietta. I believe that my grandfather ran a store out of it for a while but I’ll have to check that with my mother. The railroad once ran through our current yard and down Alligator Branch Road.

    These signs are from near Fairmont, where I went to school. I’ve always found them funny. “Branch” refers to a stream in the swampland. Most streams and creeks down there don’t have well defined banks.

  • Saturday morning coffee pot post

    There is a light rain outside that I’m happy about, because it will keep me inside where I need to knock out the taxes. We need money to bolster the Irish economy in May!

    This was my last really heavy duty work week for a while. Now it will be a more normal load, as several of my deadlines and major duties passed at the end of March. That’s the way it is in my job – really busy sometimes, and really slow sometimes. I don’t mind that. The long peaceful summer when I can take time off without getting behind and work on projects that aren’t driven by time is very nice. Another month of serious work days remains before that, but at least I’ll feel like I can go out for a lunch break more often. Have I mentioned lately how much I love my job? I love my co-workers. I really love nearly every little part of it, except sometimes the inevitable bureaucracy of working for a large organization where people in other offices decide things for you without knowing what you do or how things work best, or how they work at all, gets on my nerves a bit. But I get over it.

    So, Susanne and I hauled back a big load of iris leaves and a couple of big buckets of horsetail from Goat Lady Dairy last Sunday. She is going to lend me her Critter to make paper pulp here at my house! This is a very expensive piece of equipment that makes exquisite pulp for papermaking. Susanne has a big Hollander beater at her house for making large quantities of paper pulp, so she only needs the small Critter for travel. I am psyched about this since I will be able to make some real cotton and linen rag paper from fabric scraps and yarns leftover from weaving and stitching. I love to recycle all that I can. I don’t know why it gives me such joy but I love nothing better that to make something useful out of something that would have been thrown “away.”

    I put quotes there because of course “away” is that fantasy place where trash disappears because it is out of our sight and we don’t think about it any more.

    Yes, see. I am still interested in sustainability and simple living and environmentalism. I know it doesn’t seem that way any more but I got tired of writing about it. I still care about local food and Slow Food, but for some reason the LAST thing in the world that I want to do these days is cook. When I do cook, it is usually uninspired and done with a bit of resentment because I would really rather do anything else. I go through periods of this and this one has lasted a long time. Sometimes I wonder if it is that I don’t really like my kitchen. I can’t tell you why I don’t like my kitchen because I can’t put my finger on it myself. I thought I would grow to like it but I still miss my little crowded kitchen from the house next door.

    And the gardening thing, well, the pain in my hands and the critters stealing all the fruits and tomatoes and squash and peppers pretty much took the joy out of that, but I do plan to plant butterbeans and field peas again since those do well. I’m going to try some indigo as well, although I was supposed to start the plants inside a couple of weeks ago and that hasn’t happened. I don’t have a good place to start seeds anymore because I no longer have a “cat-free” room since Theo came to live with us. If I shut that room off now there would be no end to the yowling and crying and scratching at the door.

    The Back Forty is starting to look beautiful again without much help from me, though. I bought a new canvas roof and mosquito netting curtains for the gazebo in the back, which I need to replace soon before the skeeters hatch out. That is usually in May, but we have had such an extremely warm winter here it wouldn’t surprise me to see them even now. I made green-colored recycled paper back there after work on Monday and it made me very happy and content. It could be that I will need to switch over to papermaking from stitching since my tendinitis seems to be calling the shots despite the surgery.

    I realize that I have a short window of opportunity to do solar printing while it is warm and the mosquitoes are not around, so I may get some cloth ready to do that tomorrow when the forecast is mostly sunny.

  • Sunday morning coffee pot post

    Yesterday was so peaceful. I painted lovely mindless color-washed pages for blank journals – a page for just about any mood, including a few stormy ones. But now I’m ready to make some book covers and it just ain’t happening. I started doing it anyway yesterday and hopefully something good will pop out. Sometimes you just gotta do da work. Now is the time to go to my photo collection for inspiration – maybe the texture photos? Hmmmm.

    Susanne and I are riding out to Goat Lady Dairy this afternoon to pick up iris leaves for papermaking. I should have some cotton and abaca pulp thawed out by this afternoon so if the storms let up I might get some papermaking in. I have a lot of colored papers from the office that I save for recycled sheets. I find that the recycled pulp is much stronger when added to cotton or abaca. I like to use shredded transcripts and blue book covers in these papers – I call it “graduate student sweat paper.”

    If this sounds like my hands are much better, I’m afraid that is not the case. However, my doctor assures me that I will be better and he can give me a couple of injections in my thumb if I continue to have problems. My physical therapist shakes her head at me and tells me to only stitch for fifteen minutes at a time – which I usually do anyway – but sometimes time falls away when I’m doing these things, which I guess is why I do them in the first place. I am left wondering just why the hell I had this surgery to begin with, but I am trying to have faith that time is the answer, and I don’t do as much as I would ordinarily in the spring, so I’m being as good as I can be. I’m trying not to complain but it has been depressing. I was trying to get off my anti-depressants but I started them back up on a regular basis and I do feel better now. I gave up beer for Lent, which was major, and I’ve fallen off the wagon twice. So considering how crazy-making work has been, I think that I’m doing rather well, actually. Art and good books and thinking about Ireland have all been part of that mood enhancement.

    I haven’t done much gardening other than clean-up from last year and pruning back the fig tree rather viciously. I planted a lettuce mix and Danvers carrots from High Mowing Seeds in the beds that don’t get as much sun. The violets are taking over again and they are so pretty this time of year I can’t say that I really mind it.

    Theo had to go back to the vet – he really has the worst allergies that I have ever seen in a cat. How did they ever survive in the wild? He wouldn’t last six months as a feral cat. So the vet thinks that if I get him a steroid shot every six months, keep him on daily antihistamines, and vigilant flea medication, that should work for him.

    Meanwhile, Guido goes to the vet every six weeks for the same shot, except this one controls his cancer. He freaks out worse that any animal I’ve ever taken to the vet. I dreaded taking him yesterday because Sandy said that when he took him in early February he nearly had a heart attack and he’d never seen him so stressed out. So I gave him a pain pill before we went, popped him into the cat carrier, and he pooped all over it and himself before I even got him to the car. Ugh. It was a major mess. The good news is that he finally gained weight, .6 lb since the last time, and he behaved reasonably well enough for them to get him mostly cleaned up. There was concern about inflamed teeth (he doesn’t have hardly any left) the last time and Dr. Hunt did not see that problem this time. The steroid shot made him super hyper and he ran around and cried most of the night. This morning he seems better.

    Lucy’s asthma and coughing is finally much better. I put a vaporizer in our bedroom near where she sleeps and I think it helped all of us.

    Hopefully I will have some photos to show of the Magic Hands flag soon. I am not rushing it at all. I’ve also been working on a denim blanket constructed mostly of woven cloth strip squares on the sewing machine. I am way behind on Jude’s online class because I find it frustrating to have all that inspiration and the competing admonition of my brain saying, “Slow down. Slow down.”

    I’ll leave you with a couple of photos of one of my favorite hangouts – M’Coul’s Pub in downtown Greensboro, NC.

  • Saturday morning coffee pot post

    I had to slow it down. I had a setback with my flexibility and pain, although my strength tests were much better. It was quite disappointing for me because I am so rarin’ to go with all the inspiration I get from my online class with Jude Hill, but I finally accepted (after being told by my doctor and therapist) that I was overdoing it, and I’ve spent the last couple of weeks not doing much other than reading and working and getting through a bad cold.

    Last Friday I celebrated the 51st anniversary of my birth, the one in which I “broke the mold.” My poor mother. She had a handful when she had me. Her friends told me later when I was an adult that they dreaded it when she brought me over. I can just imagine when I consider how I might feel with a wild child in my house.

    Anyway, I had caught Sandy’s nasty cold, and I had some drinks at Old Town Draught House with a couple of co-workers and my husband on Friday evening, went to bed early, then on Saturday I went to Leon’s Beauty School and got a short haircut and Sandy took me to Josephine’s Bistro on Spring Garden St., which has become my new favorite upscale restaurant. So many of my favorites shut down with the recession. Josephine’s sources its food locally as much as possible and lists the farmers and food producers it buys from on its menu board. I appreciate that extra step so much. And they offer small plates on many entrees. I was ailing, though, so I just ordered a seafood soup and a beet salad. And OH MY GOD, they were both WONDERFUL.

    In order to keep myself from going nuts I decided to go ahead and research and plan and make lodging reservations for the Ireland trip, based on the general plan Sandy and I plotted out on a napkin at the bar at Josephine’s. What is really nice about Ireland is that most hotels and guesthouses allow you to cancel up to 1-2 days ahead of time with no penalty! I don’t know if it is a law or what, but I sure do like it. I wish the U.S. would do it that way. Sandy and I travel really well together, thank God, because we like the same things. He has made me more of a history buff and I have made him more of a foodie.

    So here’s the plan:

    • Day 1: Arrive in Dublin early Saturday morning
    • Day 1-2: Saturday and Sunday: Take a bus or train to Ariel House, stay Saturday-Sunday nights, explore Dublin
    • Day 3: Monday morning: Take a bus or train to airport and pick up rental car, Drive to Newgrange and Hill of Tara, go on tours
    • Day 3: Monday night: Drive to Kells, stay at Headfort Arms (I may decide to change this one.)
    • Day 4: Tuesday morning, explore Kells area, drive to Ballycastle, UK
    • Day 4: Tuesday night: explore Ballycastle, REST. Stay at An Caislean.
    • Day 5: Wednesday morning: explore Giant’s Causeway and Grianan of Aileach and whatever on the drive to Buncrana. I believe this is fitting that I will visit the ancient ancestral home of the O’Neill Dynasty on the 25th anniversary of becoming an O’Neill.
    • Day 5: Wednesday night: Lake of Shadows Hotel in Buncrana. Our 25th anniversary night.
    • Day 6: Thursday morning: Drive to Galway via Letterkenny. This will take all day. See Galway
    • Day 6: Thursday night: Asgard Guest House in Galway
    • Day 7: Friday: REST and explore Cliffs of Maher
    • Day 7: Friday night: Asgard Guest House in Galway
    • Day 8: Saturday: Dingle Peninsula? Ennis? Drive to Killorglin.
    • Day 8: Saturday night: Grove Lodge in Killorglin.
    • Day 9: Sunday morning: Ring of Kerry, Skellig Michael? Hope so, it would round out the current World Heritage sites in Ireland. But I do get seasick and it depends on weather, also.
    • Day 9: Sunday night: Grove Lodge Guesthouse
    • Day 10: Monday morning: Drive back to Dublin, maybe stop at Blarney castle on the way, find a place near the airport to stay
    • Day 10: Monday night: Dublin airport hotel, collapse
    • Day 11: Tuesday morning: GO HOME

    Now I have to find something to occupy my brain until May 11.

    Since it is likely that I will forget it, guess I’ll mention here that my 7th blogiversary will be on Monday. I began this blog as a garden/local food/general therapy journal. Eventually I ran out of things to say about gardening and local food, especially when other local bloggers came along and started doing it better, and I turned my focus to my art. I am still an advocate of voluntary simplicity, although I might sound monetarily rich from all my traveling. If you saw my house and my car (which I seldom drive) and my clothes, you’d see that it is a matter of the choices that I’ve made to prioritize those things that mean the most to me and make me inwardly rich.

  • Saturday morning coffee pot post

    I’m drinking my little pot of coffee kind of late this morning, but I have already taken Theo to the vet for a bit of maintenance on his back side and taken my car to the carwash. I actually had to wash my car in order to drive it to the carwash – it was that covered in bird poop. During weekdays parking on the street is scarce and if I have to park my car in the driveway under the maple tree this time of year, it only takes a couple of hours for the birds to ruin it. Hopefully I will not have to park it under the tree again for a while. The robins and cardinals are back in town and they love their holly berries.

    Last weekend I finished weaving the last scarf on the loom from before my surgery and I wove off the rest of the warp in a firm weft-faced plain weave to make a book cover for a sketchbook. This week I am measuring some warp for another set of scarves and I am going to play with Danish medallions and more plain weave variations. Seems like I always come back to plain weave in some form. I like the simplicity and the focus I can make on color rather than a complicated threading and treadling pattern.


    Excuse the crooked orientation, but here’s a little journal with stenciled and color-washed pages that I’ve been working on forever, seems like. I’m about to take all these down to the gallery and I can’t seem to get great photos, so I’m making do with these because I have other stuff to do.

    I’m about to buy our plane tickets for our 25th wedding anniversary trip to Ireland in May. After playing around on Google maps and getting a good idea of where certain sites are and the distance between them, I was pleased to realize that Ireland is really not that much bigger than North Carolina. My only real worry is adjusting to driving on the right side of the road, and I’d rather we didn’t start out that way in the heavy traffic around Dublin. But I’m probably looking for reasons to worry. We’re thinking that we’ll spend a couple of days in Dublin, then head to the Giant’s Causeway (a UNESCO World Heritage site) on the north coast of Northern Ireland, then drive back down the western coast to the Ring of Kerry and see what we can before we have to drive back to Dublin. We are more interested in ancient sites and the scenery so we’ll have to make a lot of hard choices along the way in order to make it all the way to the south. I wanted to hit both UNESCO sites in Ireland, but Skellig Michael is eight miles out at sea, and I get terribly seasick. Plus we may get there and the weather will keep us from going. Since the two sites are on direct opposites sides of the island, we’re going to hit the Giant’s Causeway first in the north.

    I feel relieved just to have made the decision.

    Handwise – I did a lot of stitching last night and my left hand is not happy this morning. I’m trying not to be dismayed that doing the test for de Quervain’s this morning hurts like hell. I really have run out of patience with all this, and I thought that my recovery would be complete by now. I’m supposed to see Dr. Weingold for my “last” visit on Tuesday, and was supposed to be finished with PT, but my therapist said that he wouldn’t be happy with the results of my strength tests so I am going to see her first to redo them. If I did all the exercises I have been assigned for my at-home therapy every day I would not have time to do anything else. I’m working with putty for strengthening. I think that my expectations were too high, but I was going by what the doctor told me. The therapist told me that I am going through a normal period of pain and inflammation. Argh.

    Anyway, most activities do not hurt me at all but I just want to get this healed and over with! It is such a relief to be able to weave and stitch again. Some good news is that I finally got out my sewing machine and it is a good experience. My other sewing machines were so frustrating and this one is easy and unintimidating. If I have to roll back my handstitching again I won’t feel so bad if I can sew on the machine. The problem is gripping the cloth with my left hand.

  • Getting back to the good stuff

    I started this acrylic painting while my left hand was still wrapped up from surgery. I need to spend a couple of hours more on details and then I’ll replace this photo with the final version.

    I started physical therapy this week and finally got out the sewing machine again to begin work on a large cloth that I am working on under the instruction and inspiration of Jude Hill in her Cloth to Cloth and Sun Moon Stars and Magic Diaries online classes. I have fallen in love with the color blue all over again, after years of crushing on green and purple and yellow. I have lots of worn out blue jeans, because that is just about half of my wardrobe. I bet I can count on one hand the number of friends who have seen me wearing something other than jeans on an ordinary day.

    This boro square is woven with recycled jeans and a square of fabric I soy batiked a couple of years ago in Melanie Testa’s class and then dipped in black walnut dye. Always keep your paper and fabric work that you are less than happy with, because you can always use them for layered or woven projects. Layers = richness. This is a base cloth for further work and a larger project, as is the next one, woven with mostly recycled clothing from our closets.

    I discovered a couple of artists over the last couple of days who I really like – I am drawn to environmental and natural art forms, work using recycled and plant materials, such as Andy Goldworthy and Magdalena Abakanowicz.

    Valerie Buess
    Alastair Heseltine

    Were you aware that some artists do not want you to pin their work on Pinterest.com without permission? Maybe these artists are responding to people who pin their work as their own, or do not give attribution. I figure that it is the same as sharing a link to someone who you are inspired by or greatly admire, and to me it is about promoting and honoring that person’s work. I’ve never considered the potential for abuse until lately. I’ve seen my photography used on other sites without permission, when all they had to do was ask me. And there have also been several requests which I have granted, with gratitude that my work was appreciated. It’s a sticky problem to share your work on the Internet, and many artists have terrible problems with it.

    In any case, if you pin or post someone’s work, please make sure that it at least contains a link going back to their site or the article where you saw the work published and attribution to the artist (that goes for my work, too). Now I will be more careful when pinning, because although I believe that I have always provided a link, I’m not so sure about the ones that I have re-pinned and will check those in the coming week, and I doubt that I have given attribution in the comments for all of them.

  • Sunday morning coffee pot post

    So, things are going fairly well. I sold three scarves, a few books, and a few prints at the gallery in the past two months. I’m going to renew my contract for May 2012-13 but rent a smaller space, since I really didn’t need three shelves of space this year. If my sales get a little better, I may even break even next year, but I’m not really doing this for the money anyway. I just want an outlet for my art and be a part of the art community in Greensboro.

    The critters are doing better. Theo was acting weirder than usual (notice the “-er”) and I finally found a flea on Guido. Theo is super-sensitive to flea bites. Now they are all dosed up with Advantage and loratidine and everybody is happier. Lucy is still very congested and I bought a vaporizer for the bedroom where she sleeps and hangs out. They all play and fight and are fairly active for older cats. Sandy saw Guido dancing sideways up to Lucy like a kitten. He did cry a lot last night and now when he does that I worry more, now that I’ve seen the xrays showing several kidney stones. I figure that he may be trying to pass one. If one gets stuck in his urethra, we will have a very tough decision to make. He’s not crying today so it’s possible that he either passed it or he had the old kitteh blues. I’ll going to slip him a pain pill if he does it again tonight.

    I’m doing better, although my hand is very sore. I was released from my hard splint on Thursday and I have to do physical therapy once a week for three weeks starting tomorrow. Not bad. The scar tissue in my palm is very hard and I am working on it with lotion and massage. I pushed it a little too hard yesterday cooking and doing things around the house and my hand went numb last night. Now I know why he prescribed a “compression garment” (i.e. glove) for me but I put it off since I know that I have one around here somewhere. Of course, I can’t find it so I guess that’ll be one more expense when I go in tomorrow.

    The exciting news is that I signed up for this workshop with India Flint in August: In Search of the Blues. I’ve been entranced with India Flint’s work for over a year now, and despite the workshop comes at a time of year when I normally cannot take off work, I could not let the opportunity to learn from this amazing Australian artist go by. When I heard that Jude Hill was also going to take the workshop, that settled it. My two biggest inspirations in one place, playing with indigo in the New Hampshire summer? I had to do it. I only wish that I could take both workshops, but I am grateful for the chance to take the one.

    I struggled with this decision because we are planning to go to Ireland for our 25th anniversary in May, and I have so many bills with my surgery and the cats’ vet bills and the house repairs now. I’m not bad off, but I am used to budgeting for these kind of things so that I save up beforehand and am still able to pay off my credit card each month. Now I have too much on my cards to pay off at once and a big home equity loan. I don’t mind our mortgage – Sandy pays that and it seems a necessary evil that I don’t think about. But I hate being in debt for other things. I have the money saved for my plane ticket, and Sandy has the money saved for his plane ticket. I don’t want to touch that, for fear that the trip plans might fall apart if I do.

    Susanne and I played with dyes this past Monday and that was great fun. I dyed some of the cloths that I bought at a rummage sale for 10 cents each in blue in preparation for a boro cloth I am planning to sew, inspired by my online lessons with Jude. I overdyed a rayon scarf that I had originally dyed at the shibori workshop in Asheville, then decided to give it a dip in black walnut dye to tone down the green. I didn’t like the resulting olive shade, so I pleated and bound it and kept it waiting for a blue dyepot. The photo shows the results, which I am thrilled with. After a wash in hot water and a turn in the dryer on hot, it is muted and soft and lovely. There are a couple of small holes where I messed up in snipping away the shibori knots, but Kristina suggested sewing a smattering of beads across it to hide that – a good idea. I may simply do a little embroidery with silk thread, though.

    “Anonymous” is a very scary bunch, and I’d hate to get on their bad side. And I’m not sure that I can endorse them. But this gave me a good chuckle first thing this morning. Anybody who screws with Monsatan is a hero in my book.

  • 2011 Wrap-up

    The word I said would be my guiding theme for 2011 was “play.” The real theme of 2011 turned out to be “get it done.” But I did get in some wonderful travel and art experiences anyway.

    Much of the first part of it was miserable. I was in pain physically, mentally, and emotionally. It wasn’t due to turning 50 or officially hitting menopause. I welcomed those things. I have to be able to work with my hands, whether it is through art, cooking, or gardening. That creativity is what saves me from major depression, and I was not able to do any of that without paying for it in pain.

    In February I celebrated 50 in Los Gatos, California, at An Artful Journey, painting papers for three days under the guidance of Albie Smith and pondering the direction my life would take. That was a wonderful experience! It is so exhilarating to be able to travel by myself across the country to take advantage of these teachers – ten years ago I would never have predicted this possibility.

    Susanne Martin and I also traveled to the Focus on Book Arts conference in Forest Grove, Oregon, where we met up with my book artist friend Judy Strom. We both fell in love with the area and enjoyed our one night in Portland, although we got to see very little of it. It definitely gave us both a yearning to go back, and Susanne was able to get her Lakota book into a gallery in Portland. Maybe she will get to teach at the next one in 2013, in which case there is no doubt that I will tag along.

    In July our family rented an oceanfront cottage at Sunset Beach and played with my aunt and cousin and cousin-in-law from Denver. That was a fantastic week.

    Over Labor Day weekend, Sandy and I went to Asheville where I took a one-day shibori workshop at Cloth Fiber Workshop and Sandy indulged his newly discovered fascination with painting by wandering around the galleries. Asheville. God, I love Asheville.

    I took out a home equity loan and we replaced our entire HVAC system – both the furnace and the AC were on their last legs (or dead) and our ductwork was total crap. This also meant that I had to get asbestos removal specialists to remove all the ductwork. My plan for the rest of the money was to remove the deck so that we could get to our basement, a situation I won’t go into, but it was nearly impossible to do and was flooding frequently. I wanted to rebuild a simple small, screened porch to replace it and bolster a joist beneath the house that somebody before us inexplicably sawed in two, but then was told that our three 1922 vintage chimneys were letting water into the house, so the rest of the money went to deck removal and chimney repair, and a small platform off the back door for safety’s sake, and we just have a tarp thrown over the basement entrance. So it was “get it done” year for the house, and the next thing will probably have to be rebuilding the bathroom floor over that joist. All of this will have to wait, because I am not putting off travel in order to do it.

    I skipped Journalfest because of the house repairs and the other trips, telling myself that I needed to show some restraint and frugality and that I could always go in 2012. Except that after Journalfest was over, Teesha announced that she was not doing Journalfest any more, which broke my heart. Man, I loved that event, that place, those people. It still makes tears well up in my eyes to think about it. But as I will soon tell you, 2012 will have delights in store for me anyway!

    I did all the proper 50 year old medical tests and procedures – I officially hit menopause, had my yearly mammogram, had a good dermatologist check me out thoroughly and pronounce my skin cancer-free, and my second colonoscopy. also polyp-free (family history made me begin at 40). I spent a lot of time in physical therapy for my de Quervain’s tendinitis at the beginning of the year, which didn’t help, then tried injections a couple of times, which did help but the doctor would not do more than 2-3 max per year, and they didn’t last but 3 months. So I had surgery for de Quervain’s and this Dupuytren’s nodule in my left hand just before Christmas. Which is why I’m posting this wrap-up a week after I began it – it takes a while to type one-handed, although I’m very good at it. Dr. Weingold thinks that the surgery was successful – he said that my tendons were pretty tightly bundled up in there. The surgery expanded the hole that they pass through. The nodule removal was more preventative – it could have eventually drawn my fingers down and surgery now is much less recovery time than later, so I decided to do both. “GET IT DONE.”

    My mother really suffered this year with sciatica and that was a huge concern. Thank God she is much better now after several epidural injections. She also had her cataracts removed. All this means that she ended the year still able to live on her own and drive around and do all her Mama thangs – not bad for 88 years old.

    The big bucket list item was joining an artists’ co-op – Elements Gallery – this year. My sales were pretty decent for Christmas so I guess I will renew my contract in April, although for a smaller amount of space.

    Since May I have been taking online classes from Jude Hill (Spirit Cloth), and although I have not been able to stitch nearly as much as I wanted to, it has been a mind and heart opening process.

    We lost Miss Jazz in April. That was heart-breaking. Our little girl was with us for 17 years, and her spirit was amazing and strong until the end when her twisted little body just couldn’t carry on any more. Miss Lucy scared us this summer with asthma so bad it confused everyone and put her in the ICU for a few days. We thought we might lose her too. Then Guido got cancer and kidney stones and spent time in ICU in December, but it seems to be benign, thank God. Two days after Guido got sick, Theo apparently ate some chicken bones from the garbage and HE had to spend time in the ICU. So we really ended up with major bills this fall, and almost lost our other fur-babies.

    So what will be my theme for 2012? I don’t know yet. I think that it will be a much better year. Maybe my theme for the first half of the year will be “patience” and then I’ll adopt another for the second half.